Weekly Update: September 29 - October 6, 2019

Oct 6, 2019

It’s always interesting to dive into a new technology you haven’t used before. Over the last week, I spent some time learning about Microsoft’s Cosmos DB. For anyone else who is new to the technology, Azure Cosmos DB is a cloud-hosted, managed database. The main selling points of Cosmos DB are that it’s insanely fast (single-digit millisecond latency), scalable, supports many multiple API protocols, and it’s geographically replicated across the globe. I got my feet wet with the database through Learning Azure Cosmos DB on Pluralsight. The course provides an overview of the technology from a general point of view and then shows how to use it in code with the SQL API, the .NET SDK, the Table API, and the Gremlin API. Cosmos DB is an exciting technology, and I’m looking forward to watching it evolve and finding ways to integrate it into my creations.

My reading this week came from [Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind][smbm] by Shunryu Suzuki. The book is a short, profound set of thoughts on meditation. My main take away is the focus on the beginner’s mind where we continually try to improve. Beginners know that they have work to do and there is room for them to grow. The person who thinks they’re an expert is susceptible to overlooking details that the vigilant beginner will undoubtedly find. The beginner’s mind can be applied anywhere.

Dev-eryday

Dev-every is a personal project created by Joshua Niederer to aid in becoming a better software developer. The concept is to develop myself and my skills every day. This site serves to log my efforts and to share knowledge, creations, insights, and whatever else I discover along the way.